Asakiyume mita

I'm reading a book right now (in VERY slow time... like a page every now and then) that you might like (maybe have already read). It's called Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, by Elinor Ostrom. It was published in 1990. I'm really enjoying it so far: it's very clearly written, and she promises to have examples of collective solutions that people in various parts of the world have developed for commons problems, as well as cases where people's solutions haven't worked out. Her mission (as I understand it) is to offer examples that show that the choices aren't just a binary of top-down government control or privatizing everything. (Not that *you* ever thought those were the only two choices, but those are very loud alternatives that get talked about.)

... I realize that that seems tangential to the Virginia election, but I mention it because I feel like the more examples we have of people somehow finding a way to work together for the common good, the better. More models and more examples could help, I figure. One thing that interested me in the one brief example she's given so far is that a fishering situation in Turkey eventually got solved--but the community tinkered with fixes for 10 years. Ten years! It was a throwaway sentence but it said so much--these things take time. People assume if something isn't fixed in one financial quarter or one year or one political term that a plan isn't working, but a lot of things take a lot of tinkering. Again, this isn't an observation directly on the outcome of the Virginia election, but just on time frames, generally.